The Rise of Erebus
by SydneyTheSquidney
Summary: Mark, a human-turned-god, has been living a painful and difficult life. He doesn't know how he is going to pull through... Until he meets Nike. Goddess of Victory, at first glance they are polar opposites. Mark hates war, while Nike lives for it. But as they begin to know each other, the opposites aren't that noticeable. Now, they are faced with the hardest decision of their lives.


The leather felt cool in my hand as I silently prowled through the dark warehouse, unable to see farther than five feet in any direction.

A voice spoke in rushed Greek from a corner, and my head whipped around, sending beads of sweat everywhere. My grip on my sword tightened as I quietly stalked towards the corner, the voice screaming now, pleading.

"_Óchi , óchi! Stamatí̱ste ! Stamatí̱ste !" No, no! Stop! Stop!_

I halted, and closed my eyes. When I opened them, I could see the corner, what seemed like candlelight in pure darkness.

There were no candles, of course, because this place was abandoned. Abandoned, except for the pudgy, screaming man in front of me, his hands clutching his head. He wore tattered clothes, and his eyes were wide, pleading, and scared.

"Calm down." My voice was even and gentle, but firm. "What is wrong?"

I knelt down next to his trembling form, and he screamed. My eyes flashed, and he was silent, and then he started to talk.

When he spoke, it was accented English. I listened intently as he told me.

"The darkness…_ Erebus_…" Then, he started to scream. I sat back, thinking. If Erebus was doing this to him, we were screwed. I had to get more out of him, but I couldn't, not when he was like this. I stood up, and started to reach for him.

"Come on, we're going to take you to a safe place," I assured him, and touched his arm.

The second we made contact, his eyes turned in to twin black orbs, directed towards me. When he spoke, the voice was gravelly and detached. His mouth seemed to move oddly, his jaw swinging on its hinges, and it made me take a step back.

"_Listen to me… Olympus will fall… Warn the gods…" _

Then the man fell back, limp, not breathing.

My eyes widened, and I took a few steps back. The body looked perfectly normal, the eyes back to standard. Before I knew it, I tore out of the building and jumped into the air, higher than any human could possibly jump. Instead of landing, I felt my body shift and change as I flapped my wings, feathers flattened by the wind.

My name is Mark. When I was young, at the age of sixteen, I figured out I was a demigod. The year was 1943, and back then, Camp Half-Blood was mostly the same. Years passed, and the week I turned twenty, tragedy struck. I was on a quest, the same quest that killed so many and saved Olympus. I was one of the people that died, leaping in front of a man to take a spear hit. Later did I learn that the man I mistook for a soldier was Poseidon, in human form to recover from an arrow wound. Therefore I was made into a god as I died; a painful but life-changing event that I could never forget.

I was relatively young, and my powers were still developing. I didn't really fit in with the others for the first fifty years or so, mostly just staying in the shadows and waiting to see what would become of me. Eventually, I gained my first power. The ability to change my body into any form I wished, which has saved my butt many times before, and will save me in the future.

My godly parent was Hephaestus, who was thrilled to have me join him in Olympus. I wasn't quite as excited, due to the fact that my friends were dead and I had never really enjoyed tinkering or building things. I had an amazing ability to build and create, but it never really clicked with me. I was a fire-wielder, and was grateful that the power had stuck when I joined the others.

Since the fateful day I received my ability to shape-shift, more had come to me. Along with the fire, I was able to control the elements, which I was still learning to do. Only recently did I learn that I could shoot these weird beams of what I learned was energy from my palms. It was nice, but I preferred not to kill and to practice. I didn't enjoy going out to destroy monsters, or get rid of some annoying human, or do anything that Zeus told me to do. I wanted to stay and watch the Camp grow. Dionysus was able to retire and return to his full-time job as a drunk when I requested that I became the camp advisor next to Chiron, and now, when he was sober, was always kind to me.

Another nifty ability of mine was to change size and appearance as a human, but all gods could do that. I was an old pro at that, but I still didn't know how to utilize this in a helpful way. I kept mostly to myself, which explained why I had no wife or girlfriend on Olympus yet. I decided to stay as I was before, a 20-year-old boy that picked up unwanted attention.

Ever since I was born, my looks have been my ticket to popularity. Not that I talked, or was smooth with words. People flocked to me, and I wasn't sure I liked that. Girls wanted me, and boys envied me. But I never let that change me. I let my love for knowledge show, and that was all that was important to me. When I got to Olympus, I immediately took to the library, which was bigger than my entire high school before Camp. I immediately became close to Athena, who taught me most of my fighting skills and honed my reflexes and abilities.

Although I'm sure you'd like to sit here and read about my boring life all day, I guess I'd better get back to the story.

The warehouse was in Montana, but with a few powerful wing strokes, I was back to New York. I landed in an alley as a pigeon. I had taken off as a hawk.

I quickly turned into a human, wearing a black jacket and plain clothes, walking swiftly to the Empire State Building. 2013 was good to me, I suppose, with the development of my new strengths and skills.

My strength and speed had improved drastically this year, and Hephaestus was proud. I used it to train, to improve my body and mind. Especially with Zeus sending me out on quests and whatnot every few months.

Soon, I was running towards the throne room, my jacket billowing. It was late. The Olympians would be enjoying the scents while in their thrones at this hour.

"Zeus!" I yelled as I ran into the hall. "I have news."

"What is it, boy?" He looked annoyed, but I didn't care.

"Erebus is back." I quickly filled them in on my experience. I was there to scout the warehouse, and had to kill some monsters on the way, which I hated. I had no idea why we couldn't just bond with the creatures, but I had always been opposed to violence.

Zeus sat back in his throne, stroking his beard.

"Mark," Hephaestus leaned forward in his chair. "Good job. You may go to bed now."

I nodded. They all knew that I could never shake the habit of sleeping, although it wasn't needed at this point.

As I walked down the marble, columned pathway, I wondered. I wondered why Erebus would return, and what he would do. Obviously, it was lead to more deaths, and more tears, and more anger than usual here at Olympus.

I waved and said hello to people I passed on my way to the elevator, but my mind was somewhere else. I pressed my fingertip to the scanner, and then the elevator zipped down. As it made its dizzying descent down, I thought of my room at Camp. It was in the Big House, because I had no reason to have children yet. It was huge, the space manipulated by some powerful demigod to make it look small on the outside and from looking in the window, but giant when you stepped in.

I ducked into an alley were some homeless people were smoking what smelled like drugs. I nodded to them, and they stumbled towards me, giggling like idiots. No wonder they were homeless.

"Pretty boy, eh?" One grinned absent-mindedly. He was missing most teeth.

"Sir, please get away." He was uncomfortably close to me, and I didn't want to take this to punches.

"Oh, you'll make a fine one," He giggled. I could hardly resist a sigh of disgust. I had no sympathy towards people like this.

I shrugged and just shifted anyway. These guys were hallucinating enough to just pin this to being a side-effect of the drugs.

I was a pigeon again, cooing as I passed through the Camp boundary, the moonlight glinting off my wings. I landed, and then quickly headed into the Big House. I turned into my room, and halted with my hand on the knob. A voice behind me called my name again, and I saw Chiron in his wheelchair, smiling up at me.

"Good work," He nodded towards me, and I returned the nod and the smile as he wheeled off. I opened my door and stepped inside.

My room had blue walls, with a big bed pushed into the corner. It was queen-sized, but hardly took up any space in my gargantuan space.

In another corner, my studio, with its papers strewn everywhere and bookshelf messy, was my favorite part of the room. There I read and I wrote and did everything I loved. On the far left wall, I had a basketball goal set up. Playing basketball was a luxury I didn't give up. I used to play out in the park every day when I got out of school. But that was when I was a human, in high school.

It was regulation sized, which was awesome. The ceilings were high, and I had mastered almost every trick imaginable with all the time I had in between training and doing tasks.

A rack of basketballs sat beside it, and I walked over and picked one up, bouncing it on the wood floor. I shot, and it swooshed the net. I grinned, and looked around at the familiar space I have come to love.

A big television was on one wall, and a window was nearby. A coffee table and a dining table were all crammed into this area, making one giant room of everything I needed. A doorway leads to a bathroom and another to a kitchen, where I had learned to cook anything and everything. I had much spare time, although about twenty years ago most of my time was consumed by training and practice.

I kicked off my shoes and stripped to my boxer shorts. No matter how regally I was supposed to dress, I preferred my T-shirts and jeans more than anything.

I crawled under the sheets and closed my eyes.


End file.
